


heartache

by novelteas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 11, Angst, Castiel Feels, Character Death, Death, Hurt Dean Winchester, M/M, Post-Canon, i needed some serious destiel angst and hurt, i'm really into putting my lil dean bean in sad situations lately i need to chill, mostly i use the tags to scrEAM, sorry ok i suck at tagging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 01:40:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6732805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novelteas/pseuds/novelteas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has been in a lot of pain before. He's been stabbed, burned, tied up, shot, strangled, and killed in a hundred different ways. He left Jo and Ellen Harvelle in the warehouse all those years ago, letting them set themselves on fire. He watched his little brother get consumed by Lucifer once. He watched his father die with the knowledge that it was for him. But nothing could ever compare to this. This, the absence of a stabbing pain in the void of his heart, where there should be heartache. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>Season 11 timeline in which Amara kills Castiel to get Lucifer.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	heartache

**Author's Note:**

> ughhhhhh i just really. need to hurt my dean bean so i can roll around in my own self-inflicted agony. so i wrote this really short one-shot. enjoy :)

Dean has been in a lot of pain before. He's been stabbed, burned, tied up, shot, strangled, and killed in a hundred different ways. He left Jo and Ellen Harvelle in the warehouse all those years ago, letting them set themselves on fire. He watched his little brother get consumed by Lucifer once. He watched his father die with the knowledge that it was for him. But nothing could ever compare to this. This, the absence of a stabbing pain in the void of his heart, where there should be heartache. 

This is not the first time Cas has died. There was the time he turned into the Leviathans and then disappeared. There was the time April killed him. There were so many times, so many of them, Dean realizes, that he's been lulled into a false sense of security. That no matter what happened to Cas, he'd come back. It's happened so many times that Dean's stopped thinking of them as gifts; they're givens. They're givens that he's taken advantage of and he should have counted his lucky stars for. 

"Hey." Dean looks up sharply from where he's seated at the desk. Sam's standing in the doorway, hands in pockets, leaning against one side. He's sucking on the inside of his lip ever so slightly, watching Dean. "Couldn't sleep?"

Dean rolls the beer bottle around on the edge of its bottom, watching the liquid inside the amber glass swirl. "Yeah," he says, like the single word can sum up everything he wants to say but is too afraid to say in front of Sam.

God, afraid of saying in front of _Sam_. Dean closes his eyes for a moment and takes another sip of beer, sighing heavily as he pulls the bottle away from his lips. When did Castiel start becoming the person he could truly say anything in front of? When did he start to love Castiel as much as his own brother? In truth, it's not that Dean can't sleep. Sleep comes easily to him. It's not a problem. If this were Sam in his position, he'd be unable to sleep, plagued by nightmares. 

But Dean thinks he's the opposite. Where Sam has dreams of everything awful that's happened - Jessica burning to death on the ceiling, even _now_ ; their father, dying and dead; Dean dying in his younger brother's arms countless times; Castiel turning into the Leviathan; Dean as a demon - Dean has happy dreams. No, they're not happy dreams. They're Castiel dreams. He dreams about him and Cas, all the little smiles and the surge of excitement fluttering in his heart and catching at the base of his throat that he used to feel whenever they shared a look. He dreams about being able to shyly hand Cas his trench coat, kept folded in the back of the Impala. He dreams about seeing Cas as a human, working at the Gas-N-Sip, the light in his bright blue eyes and the wonder on his face as he discovered what it's like. He dreams about Cas doctoring him and holding his face, the painful acceleration of his heartbeat every time Cas put his face two inches away. He has all these beautiful Castiel dreams, and he doesn't want to wake up from them, just wants to sleep forever, feeling the light agony of being in love with someone. 

After blinking for a while, watching all the shots of Cas from behind his eyelids, Dean looks back up at Sam. "Something like that," he says, clearing his throat. "It's just easier not to."

Sam nods, straightening from the door frame and walking over, pulling his hands out of his pockets to grab a chair and sit down across from Dean. "I know," he says quietly.

Dean lifts his head and observes his brother. Sam nods slowly and thoughtfully, like he totally understands what's racing through Dean's head. He _does_ know, Dean tells himself. God, Sam's known what it's like since Jessica. Sam has known all this time. Does he hate sleeping, too? Are his nightmare-less nights laced with a future that never was? Does he wake up with a suffocating lump in his throat and a burn in his eyes from crying and tears tracing tracks from the corners of his eyes, through his temples, losing themselves at his hairline?

It's weird, though. After John, after all those times Sam died, after Jo, after Ellen - Dean always felt pain. It physically hurt to breathe. He was always left with the worst heartache, the kind that gnaws at you, just a little every day, receding after a few months, only to come back when you're beginning to feel truly happy again. Right now, sitting here in the bunker with the knowledge that no matter how hard he prays, Cas won't appear uncomfortably close to him, Dean thinks he should feel the pain.

But he doesn't. Instead, it's a string of endless sighs and tears on the brink of falling and an empty void. It should be heartache, and it's not. It's like a part of him has dissolved along with Castiel, leaving a gaping hole where there shouldn't be. Like a chunk taken out of his leg. It hurts every time he moves. It hurts even when he's not moving. It hurts so much Dean thinks if he thought about it a bit more it should suddenly become real instead of just a phantom pain. It hurts so much that it's left him in a surreal state of confusion: melting paint, drooping flowers, wavy lines where they should be parallel. That's the depth and gravity of the hole in Dean's soul that Castiel's made.

Dean doesn't think it'll ever be fixed.

**Author's Note:**

> *soft singing* i can't write
> 
> even so please shower me in adoration because i'm pretentious like that. and then when you're done with that you can [visit me on tumblr](http://castikills.tumblr.com/) or talk to me/request fics, whatever. i won't tell you what to do with your life.


End file.
